Is John Hager trying to run a railroad at the RPV Convention this weekend? By the looks of the information I got this evening, is kinda looks that way.

On April 16, the RPV staff members who are supposed to spend all of their efforts running a fair convention and then beating Democrats, spent the biggest political event of the year passing out “Hager for Chairman” stickers instead of stickers asking people not to vote for Hager’s former boss, Mark Warner.

RPV staff members were then disbursed throughout the Commonwealth to take Hager campaign materials to local Republican events in hopes of defeating Jeff Frederick in his attempt to become Party chair.

This month, thousands and thousands of dollars were spent to produce and mail a newsletter promoting Hager, rather than waiting a few more weeks so that the newsletter could promote our U.S. Senate nominee to be selected this weekend.

RPV has even made an issue of something as simple as playing the Frederick for Chair campaign video during our allotted time on Saturday. Instead, our campaign was told the DVD had to either be given to Hager’s RPV days in advance (thus allowing them to review and respond to whatever we said) OR the campaign would have to pay RPV $1,500 to play the video.

Finally, this week, an RPV volunteer emailed with an even more shocking report: when he went to Party headquarters to stuff the packets that are supposed to provide information on every candidate to delegates as they arrive, he was told the “Frederick for Delegate” information would be left on the tables at RPV and not included (even though RPV had requested the info from our campaign weeks ago – and we complied). Now RPV refuses to return the literature we provided them, which cost our campaign thousands of dollars to produce.

After two months of doing everything possible to hold onto power, we are now asked to trust Hager’s same employees to count the votes in our election on Saturday. Hager’s RPV have refused to allow representatives of our campaign into the vote counting room to observe and ensure a fair process. What does Hager have to hide in the count room?

This hopefully will come to a quick end this Saturday when the convention selects Jeff Frederick to lead RPV, and puts an end to this. I’ve seen a few bad conventions, but this is plainly awful. Will the thousands of delegates who come to Richmond Saturday leave fired up and ready to win the election for our Senate nominee, or will they leave embittered by a rigged process?

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An RPV chairman should allow his opponent equal exposure before and during the convention, no different than what they would grant themselves. If the bylaws don’t offer clear guidelines, then delegates hope the Chairman would have the decency and integrity to demonstrate their personal principles in conducting a fair and balanced convention process.

In defense of the RPV Chairman, and as a delegate and supporter for Jeff, I will add that we all talk about getting back to the Big Tent day’s of Ronald Reagan, yet we continue to violate the 11th Commandment, again, and again, and again. What has happened to just showing some good old fashioned class?

It was clear that on many, many little things the RPV staff made life difficult on Frederick (and, I think, Marshall). They refused to give out information, or gave out information at the last minute, or stonewalled in providing logistical cooperation, or, rigged the proceedings, etc. With respect to the literature that was supposed to go into the delegate goody bags, Shaun Kenney seems to think he answered the question in “30 seconds” when someone at RPV told him that Frederick and Marshall could have had their stuff placed in the bags if they paid like everyone else; Shaun made this out to seem like Frederick was whining about having to support the party financially. In fact, Shaun Kenney’s blog post was the first that the Marshall and Frederick people had ever heard of that a payment was required! Likewise with the Frederick camp’s nervousness about getting locked out of the counting room…the rules governing voting and selection of tellers weren’t shared with the Frederick camp until the morning of the convention, and then only when they got it in their delegate check-in packages!! The placement of the 7th District delegation, the short-shrifting of the Prince William County delegation, and virtually every other petty little tyranny Hager’s people could muster was on embarrassing display. I’m sure some of it was that the people working for Hager were young and inexperienced, and running a huge convention like this is bound to invite large numbers of mistakes. But the preponderance of these things aimed at non-establishment candidates made it clear that the fix was in.

I can’t say for sure there was anything fishy with the Gilmore election (and I’m prepared to back him enthusiastically), but it just seemed to me that with the tally that close, and the huge propensity for math errors in this type of vote tabulation, that some provision should have been made to make sure it was accurate. Bolling, as convention chairman, shot himself in the foot with this one, as he was clearly eager to see to it that Gilmore got pronounced the nominee before giving anyone on the other side the slightest time to object. Bolling is not going to find at least half of that room very eager to help him out when he needs it.